1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to conveyor systems, and more particularly to conveyor systems for conveying containers.
2. Description of Related Art
Conveyor systems are widely used in manufacturing and food processing plants for transporting containers such as cans, bottles, boxes, etc., from station to station as the containers are filled, sealed, labeled and packaged for shipment. The conveyor system typically includes a moving closed loop belt on which the containers are placed. Once the conveyor belt brings the containers to a work station, mechanical devices are often needed to position the containers for further processing. For example, one popular package for beverage containers such as beer and soft drink cans is the "6-pack" which has six containers arranged in a two by six orthogonal matrix. However, round containers such as cans when placed on a conveyor belt and allowed to "back up" under the pressure of the moving underlying conveyor belt, tend to form a tight block of cans in a more or less "honeycomb" configuration as illustrated in FIG. 1. The honeycomb configuration is more stable than an orthogonal array such that cans initially placed in an orthogonal array and subjected to a moving and vibrating conveyor belt quickly move back toward the honeycomb configuration. Unfortunately, the honeycomb configuration is unacceptable for many commercial 6-pack packaging machines. Consequently, many such packaging machines use various mechanical devices such as star wheels to isolate individual cans and move them to form two converging rows of cans for packaging. However, these prior devices are not readily adaptable to packaging machines which can package large arrays of containers having more than two rows in the array.